Unwritten Time
by I Took the One Less Travelled
Summary: Doctor/Rose rewrite of Silence in the Library. What if the TARDIS redirected Rose's dimension jump, to lead her to the library with the Doctor? River Song learns firsthand that time can be rewritten. I wouldn't call this bashing exactly, but I'm not super-nice to River either, so if you love her, then don't read. Ten/Rose.


**So I just rewatched the Silence in the Library, and I was reminded of how much River Song irritated me in that episode. I grew more fond of her later on, since she's just so much **_**fun**_**, but earlier, I just disliked the way that she behaved. Also, there are some continuity issues—River asked him about a bunch of events that they had experienced, but she only met the Tenth Doctor the once. She had to have known just by the fact that he hadn't regenerated into the Eleventh Doctor that he hadn't done any of those things with her yet. Also, she had his screwdriver, but it looked nothing like Eleven's screwdriver—it was just Ten's screwdriver with some stuff added in. **

**So I'm not super nice to her in this, but I wouldn't call it bashing... maybe mild bashing. I wrote this when I was irritated, so I can't really look at it objectively. But if you absolutely love River and don't want to read anything where she's anything less than perfect, then don't read this. But if you like Doctor/Rose, and River sort of irritated you when she showed up, then you'll probably like this. **

The TARDIS was dissatisfied with her Doctor. The way that he had sent her Wolf away? Obviously he needed her. And trying to replace her with Melody—that wasn't fair to either of them. Melody was a child of the TARDIS—her child—but she would never replace her Wolf. Luckily, it didn't take much to change it. And so she just _tweaked_ a little bit—she grabbed a hold of her Wolf in the middle of one of her Wolf's jumps and yanked her onto the correct course, right before the Doctor was set to meet Melody for the first time. And it worked, too.

...

She appeared in the middle of a library. At least, it looked like a library, not that she had a huge amount of experience with libraries in the first place, but it did look like one. And there, not twenty feet away from her, was the TARDIS, standing tall and proud and as blue as ever, illuminated by a well-placed skylight.

She took a moment to recover from the dimension cannon's effects before unfurling and moving towards the TARDIS. The doors cracked open of their own accord, and the TARDIS key on the chain around her neck lit up and warmed against her skin.

"Hey, old girl," Rose murmured, stroking one hand along the outer panel. She let herself in carefully, and contemplated waiting for him to come back—if she failed to find him in this massive library, he wouldn't even know that she was here and therefore wouldn't hesitate to leave without her.

The TARDIS dispensed of this idea very quickly—the scanner bleeped on and showed her a map with a clear marker of which direction she needed to go in to get to the Doctor and his latest companion.

"He's hopeless without me, isn't he, old girl?" Rose asked fondly.

The TARDIS bleeped in agreement, and she breathed in the sound of the TARDIS' song, the song that had integrated itself into her head after the events of the gamestation and never left. Even when she was in the parallel universe, she had remained connected to the TARDIS enough for the song to continue in her sleep, and for the TARDIS to continue translating for her. It had been helpful in dealing with alien species, but not so helpful in her university language classes—just because she could read and understand the language as if it were English didn't mean that she could speak it—the TARDIS, being telepathic, translated into the dominant language of the person that she was speaking to. As such, it was impossible for her to learn Spanish, since she didn't even hear Spanish when the instructor was speaking to her.

She committed the map to memory and closed the TARDIS doors behind her carefully, after scrawling a note that she left on the console. Hopefully, if she couldn't find him, he would be shocked enough by the appearance of her handwriting to stick around until she managed to get back.

Then she followed the map. She came out in a room that was deserted except for a pretty girl wearing an astronaut suit and an eighties-style side ponytail. "Hello?" the girl called.

Rose stepped forward smoothly. "Hello. Oh, I'm sorry," she said, as the girl shrieked. "I didn't mean any harm. I'm just—I'm looking for a man called the Doctor, he probably has a woman with him..."

Not that she knew anything about the Doctor's latest companions, but based on what Sarah Jane had told her, he had _quite_ the harem of pretty female past travelling companions. Except Jamie—Jamie was a pretty male travelling companion, and he had apparently travelled with the Doctor for a rather long time before something had happened to tear them apart. And Jack—very pretty, even though he'd never travelled alone with the Doctor because she had always been there, but Jack was gorgeous enough that he counted. (Especially since he'd probably be ecstatic to be included in the Doctor's harem, literal or not.)

"Oh, yes," the girl said. "The Doctor. And the nice woman—she's with him."

They were interrupted by a rather sinister noise, and the girl screeched loudly. Rose jumped—nasty set of lungs on that one.

"What's your name?" Rose asked carefully.

"Miss Evangelista."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Evangelista. I'm Rose. Now, where was the Doctor? I think maybe we should start moving back to him." She scanned the room with a wary eye. "He's told me some stories about the things that can occupy dark corners, and I don't think that we want to meet them."

Carefully, Rose guided Miss Evangelista into leading her back through to the Doctor. And there he was. She paused to smile at the sight of him bouncing around like a chipmunk on crack. There was a whole brigade of spacesuit people surrounding him and ranging from amused, to annoyed to indulgent—the look on the face of the curly-haired woman that Rose disliked immediately.

And then there was the redhead who wasn't wearing a spacesuit. The way that the Doctor was talking to her, clearly she was his latest companion.

"Um, hello?" Miss Evangelista called rather vacantly. "I went into the other room for a bit, and I found someone else—she says that she knows the Doctor."

The Doctor's head snapped up in their direction, and Rose let Miss Evangelista get out of the way of his view of her before they locked eyes.

"Rose," he breathed.

She smiled at him, and noticed out of the corner of her eye that the curly-haired woman looked horror-struck, and the Doctor's companion looked shocked, but happy.

"Doctor."

She moved forward as if in a daze, and he reached for her and crushed her into a hug and held her close, and Rose closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to overwhelm.

He pulled back after what was probably several minutes, but still felt like too soon. "Donna! This is Rose!"

"Rose, like 'her name was Rose,' Rose?" the redhead, Donna, asked.

"Yeah," he managed to get out, with the cutest little smile on his face as he giggled slightly.

"Oh, it's so amazing to meet you," the woman gushed. "I'm Donna Noble, I've been keeping him company for you, but—oh, this is so exciting! She's here, spaceman! You said that she couldn't ever come back, but she's here!"

"Well... Rose Tyler doesn't believe in the impossible," the Doctor said. "And from what I've seen, the universe is inclined to agree with her."

"I missed you, Doctor," Rose said. "It's very nice to meet you, Donna."

"But she can't be here," the curly-haired woman broke in. "She isn't supposed to be here yet."

"Look, Professor Song, was it? I'm in the middle of reuniting with the woman that I—I should probably say it to her first—I was going to say it, on the beach, you knew that, right?"

"I know, Doctor," Rose said.

"Rose Tyler, I love you," he added, before beginning to bounce again. "And I'm sorry that it's taken me this long. Anyway, I am in the middle of reuniting with the woman that I love, and—you're from my future, I'm getting that, but the romantic relationship that you've implied just isn't going to happen now. Sorry."

"Ask her how she got back," the woman said smugly.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that I should disapprove, but I really can't bring myself to care."

"But—my past," the woman said frantically.

"Time can be rewritten. Sorry again," the Doctor added rudely. "But I really don't know you, and frankly, if you're just going to waltz in and behave like us being together is some kind of foregone conclusion, then I'll always wonder if I'm just with you because I knew that it was supposed to happen. And also, these twisted up timelines, they're very dangerous. You've made yourself into a living paradox so that I would have no choice but to be with you, but now the woman that I love is here, and I can categorically say that it isn't happening."

"Doctor," Donna snapped.

The woman looked utterly heartbroken. "But—she _can't_ be here. She isn't supposed to be here yet! She wasn't aiming for here. Were you?" She suddenly turned to Rose, who realized that this was, in fact, the case. She examined the dimension cannon carefully.

"She's right about that, at least. I was aiming for twenty-first century Cardiff—I needed Jack's help to try to contact you, since I was so utterly failing at managing it on my own."

"That's like a vortex manipulator," the Doctor said, leaning over it. "And those button-things that they had before."

"With some improvements," Rose said. "But it didn't work, not until the stars started disappearing. The walls, the dimensions, everything is _fading_, Doctor, and I've been trying to contact you for ages, to warn you. It's coming."

"What?"

"The darkness. It's coming."

"A vortex manipulator can be hijacked."

"By what?"

"By superior vortex technology," the Doctor said, shrugging.

"Like the TARDIS?" Rose supplied. "She did seem uncommonly happy to see me."

"She's missed you! And so have I."

"The TARDIS hijacked you out of the vortex?" the woman asked in disbelief. "But the TARDIS loves me. Why would she do this? Why would she rewrite time?"

"Look, I don't know who you are, but you behaving like you have a right to me is pissing me off," the Doctor said dangerously. "I don't care how far into the future it is that you met me, but you really need to know that I'll never stop loving her."

"Of course not," the woman said. "You wouldn't. But it's like being with a widower, I would never have expected you to forget her—"

"Except that she's not _dead_," the Doctor bit off. "We really don't have time for this now. How'd you get down here, Rose? Because you were very lucky."

"Why?"

"Stay out of the shadows."

And then they were running again, the way that they were supposed to be. The Doctor was ready to use himself as backup memory to bring all of the people out again, but Rose had the dimension cannon, and it functioned like a mini-computer, and was more than sufficient.

But then River Song started fading away.

"Doctor, what's happening to her?"

"She's a living paradox, Rose. Something was supposed to happen here to complete the time loop, but it didn't. So she's fading to prevent her paradox from doing even more damage to the universe."

"Will you see her again?"

"Most likely. But the next time I see her, all of the changes that are supposed to be will settle into place. And she will hopefully no longer have delusions of a relationship between us."

Rose nodded, and took his offered hand to follow him and Donna back into the TARDIS. They were going to head straight back to earth to investigate the stars going out, but instead they ended up on a resort where they nearly got thrown out into an airlock by a bunch of scared humans, and then ended up on some market in the future, and Rose found herself catapulted into a version of the past where she hadn't yet found the Doctor, and Donna Noble did not know him. Lucky for her, she knew that Donna was the key.


End file.
